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DETONATING NEXT WEEK --“Marco Rubio’s next fight: Abortion?” by WashPost's Juliet Eilperin and Sean Sullivan, with Rachel Weiner: “At the behest of antiabortion groups, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is considering becoming a lead sponsor of legislation that would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization. … The fact that he is mulling it over 1) is a reflection of the growing scope of the abortion debate nationally and 2) could signal a desire to bolster his standing on the political right on the heels of a rough battle over immigration. … While Fred Barnes reported in the Weekly Standard on Tuesday night that Rubio had signed onto the bill already, that decision is not yet final. ‘The pro-life groups have asked him to introduce the bill in the Senate,’ a Rubio adviser wrote in an e-mail … ‘He had not made a final decision before leaving on a family vacation this week. I expect an announcement when he gets back to D.C. next week.’

“Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced a bill this year similar to the original bill authored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), banning abortions beyond 20 weeks in the District of Columbia. The Franks bill was expanded to cover the entire country, and antiabortion groups are now discussing whether Lee or Rubio will take the lead on a broad bill, according to people involved in the discussions. … Rubio is coming off a bruising immigration battle that has reduced his standing on the right [and] needs to repair his brand among conservatives generally. … [But] the Democratic-controlled Senate is not expected to take up any legislation designed to restrict abortion laws. … ‘Senator Reid is not going to bring up this bill,’ said [a Reid] aide.” http://wapo.st/11mmj6S

--FLASHBACK – FRED BARNES blogged Tue. on Weekly Standard, “Rubio to Introduce Senate Bill to Ban Abortions After 20 Weeks”: “Rubio … today agreed to be the lead sponsor of a Senate bill to ban abortion after an unborn child is 20 weeks old. A similar measure passed the House last month and a state version is now being debated in the Texas legislature, where it is likely to be approved. With Rubio’s presence, the bill is certain to gain enormous media attention … for the issue of limiting late term abortions. … The bill faces an uphill fight in the Democrat-controlled Senate and a veto threat by President Obama. But … Republicans and the leaders of the pro-life movement regard the 20-week ban as an [issue] that might strengthen GOP candidates in the 2014 midterm election. …

“Rubio is expected to announce his sponsorship of the bill after the July 4 congressional recess. … The idea behind the anti-abortion bill is to ban abortion once the unborn child is viable – that is, able to survive – outside the womb. There is disagreement over when this occurs during a period of 20 to 24 weeks after fertilization. At the very least, Republicans will benefit from having the Rubio-backed legislation take center stage, overshadowing controversial statements by Republican candidates in 2012 about rape and abortion. The bill provides an exception to the late term ban in the case of rape or incest and when a physical health condition puts the life of the mother at risk.” http://bit.ly/12KLWI8

BREAKING – “In his final days, Morsi was isolated but defiant,” by AP’s Hamza Hendawi and Maggie Michael, in Cairo: “The army chief came to President Mohammed Morsi with a simple demand: Step down on your own and don't resist a military ultimatum or the demands of the giant crowds in the streets of Egypt. ‘Over my dead body!’ Morsi replied to Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Monday, two days before the army eventually ousted the Islamist leader after a year in office. … Even his Republican Guards simply stepped away as army commandos came to take him to an undisclosed Defense Ministry facility, according to army, security and Muslim Brotherhood officials …

“Muslim Brotherhood officials said they saw the end coming for Morsi as early as June 23 -- a week before the opposition planned its first big protest. The military gave the president seven days to work out his differences with the opposition. In recent months, Morsi had been at odds with virtually every institution in the country, including the top Muslim and Christian clerics, the judiciary, the armed forces, the police and intelligence agencies. … Thus, when Morsi was fighting for his survival, there was no one to turn to, except calling for outside help through Western ambassadors and a small coterie of aides from the Brotherhood who could do little more than help him record two last-minute speeches.”

WASHINGTON, INC. – WSJ B6, “Gambling Lobbyist Hands Over the Reins,” by Alexandra Berzon: “Frank Fahrenkopf, former national Republican Party leader and Reno attorney[,] … in 1995 was tapped by big Las Vegas-based corporate casino and slot-machine-manufacturing companies to form a new trade organization, the American Gaming Association, specifically to fend off public backlash and attempts at federal taxation and regulation. Mr. Fahrenkopf, who retired last weekend from the AGA at the age of 73, created something of a playbook for so-called vice industries hoping to expand their reach in the U.S. …. Fahrenkopf's strategy was to minimize—though, importantly, not to altogether deny—the social costs that many critics had long said accompanied casino gambling expansion.

“In the early years of the AGA, he began to push the young industry to fund addiction research and economic studies, creating reams of statistics that he rattled off in the halls of Congress, in statehouses and in pitches to newspapers. … Fahrenkopf's handiwork resulted in a series of victories as his pro-gambling rhetoric and the industry's political contributions dovetailed with anti-tax sentiment in many states, … Fahrenkopf predicts casinos will continue to spread.” http://on.wsj.com/126cPev

** A message from the Rights and Responsibilities Tour: On July 4th, Giffords and Kelly rode in a parade in Ohio and threw out the first pitch in New Hampshire! Both did target practice in Nevada and Alaska and had a rally in Fargo. See pictures from the road and learn more at rightsandresponsibilitiestour.com. **

WEDDING TODAY in Madison, Wis.: Kelly Berens, events director at the Democratic Governors Association and former director for advance for then-Speaker Pelosi, to James Gleeson, communications director for Rep. Xavier Becerra. Officiating: former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle. Kelly was his body person before moving to D.C.

--The article, “How to Win in Washington,” is an excerpt of Leibo’s book, “This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral -- plus, plenty of valet parking! -- in America's Gilded Capital,” out a week from Tue. (July 16): “Kurt Bardella [an aide to House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa] … activates your radar and not in a good way. He laughs too much and too loud. He hangs out in cigar bars. When he talks with you, you suspect you are being worked. I liked him instantly. By that I mean Bardella gave me a headache, but I liked that he flouted the norms of the smooth Washington hustler. In a city where even the most rabid striving must be cloaked in nonchalance, Bardella never pulled this off or even tried. He was not shy about sharing — on his Facebook page — his ultimate ambition: to become the White House press secretary. He was not reticent in acknowledging a danger of his brash style: ‘I’m never that far away from blowing myself up completely,’ he told me once. ‘It’s all part and parcel of my inferiority complex.’ But generally, Bardella added, he was pretty good about channeling his demons in a way that benefited … Issa …

“Bardella evinced a desperation that made him more honest than people in Washington typically are. Or maybe ‘transparent’ is a better word, because he did seem to lie sometimes (or ‘spin’ sometimes), at least to me. Even as he stuck out among earnest Hill deputies, something about Bardella wonderfully embodied the place. It’s not that Washington hasn’t forever been populated by high-reaching fireballs. But an economic and information boom in recent years has transformed the city in ways that go well beyond the standard profile of dysfunction. To say that today’s Washington is too partisan and out of touch is to miss a much more important truth — that rather than being hopelessly divided, it is hopelessly interconnected. ….

“You hear the formulations ‘He’s like a father to me’ and ‘He’s like a son to me’ quite a bit in Washington. Politicians like to self-mythologize through their fathers: John Edwards was ‘the son of a millworker,’ John Boehner ‘the son of a barkeeper’ and so on. ‘Every man is trying to either live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes,’ Barack Obama wrote. The dad thing makes a tidy device for any politician’s story, but the prevailing social dynamic of Washington so often does mimic the quest for paternal love. It is, in many ways, a city of patrons and protégés. ‘Who do you work for?’ is often the first thing people ask here. …

“As a teenager, Bardella read the memoir of … George Stephanopoulos, ‘All Too Human: A Political Education.’ What struck Bardella was Stephanopoulos’s description of his years as an altar boy in the Greek Orthodox church he attended in Rye, N.Y. It excited him, Stephanopoulos wrote, to be within the sanctum, an excitement he compared with the thrill he felt later as a political operative who penetrated the privileged circle where decisions are made. ‘There is that place to get in Washington that everybody is striving for,’ Bardella told me. ‘Once you get to that place, … you kind of just know it. It’s exciting … But you’re never sure if that feeling is going to last, or if other people are seeing you as someone on the inside. It puts you on edge, constantly.’ As a 22-year-old flack, … Bardella sent Stephanopoulos a fan note. … Stephanopoulos wrote back and invited Bardella to drop by next time he was in the neighborhood of ABC News’s Washington bureau … Bardella made a point of being in that neighborhood soon after. …

“The emergence of Politico as Washington’s company-town organ — and especially Playbook, its insider’s tip sheet sent out each morning by Mike Allen, D.C.’s electronic town crier — served Bardella’s needs well. …

“A few weeks after Election Day [2010, when Republicans regained control of the House], I visited Bardella on Capitol Hill and told him I might be interested in reporting on him for a book I was writing about this supercharged era in the capital. I found him to be an emblematic superstaffer who was making Washington work for him — a kind of will-to-power orphan who was devising his persona on the fly. I loved the sheer unabashedness, even jubilance, of Bardella’s networking and ladder-climbing. Clearly enamored of his own narrative, Bardella was intrigued by my proposition. If I was reading his face right, he had already given some thought as to who would play him in the HBO treatment. He said he believed his was an important story to tell. I told Bardella that I would visit with him periodically and encouraged him to send along updates and observations by e-mail.

“Even better, he said, he would copy me on occasional e-mail correspondence that he felt reflected his frenetic days. ‘My e-mails can basically be read as a diary of how I do my job in this crazy world,’ he told me. He didn’t appear to think twice about sharing correspondence from people who did not know their e-mails were being shared — a group that included the occasional member of Congress. Bardella concluded our conversation with a favorite phrase among aggressive D.C. boundary-pushers: ‘I’ve always thought it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission.’ …

"A few weeks after Bardella was fired, I kept running into people who said they’d seen my name mentioned somewhere but did not remember exactly why. Bardella was finding the same thing. The life cycle of public disgrace had been reduced to almost nothing, and what’s left after it exhausts itself is just a neutral sheen of notoriety. … In his new job as a senior adviser to [the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform], Bardella would not have any official dealings with the press. … Issa believed Bardella deserved a second chance, even though he had acted improperly. I first learned the news from Mike Allen in Politico. Bardella remains with Darrell Issa today. He declined to comment for this story.” http://nyti.ms/13xBo5y

BUSINESS BURST – WSJ A1, “SAC Chief Likely To Avoid Charges,” by Michael Rothfeld, Jean Eaglesham and Jenny Strasburg: “U.S. prosecutors have concluded that they don't have enough evidence against hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen to file criminal insider-trading charges against him before a July deadline, people familiar with the situation said. Investigators probing the biggest alleged insider-trading scheme in history have been eyeing the 57-year-old Mr. Cohen and his namesake SAC Capital Advisors LP hedge-fund firm for a decade, suspicious that some of its trading profits were too good to be legitimate … But this month's deadline is likely to come and go without any action against Mr. Cohen … A decision not to launch a criminal prosecution against Mr. Cohen … likely will be seen as a setback for the Justice Department.” http://on.wsj.com/13xHEKI

SPORTS BLINK – CUBAN ROOKIE IS ONE OF THE YEAR’S MOST INTERESTING BASEBALL STORIES -- L.A. Times A1 tease, “Is Yasiel Puig an All-Star? The Dodgers rookie has had an amazing first month, but it’s only a month,” by David Wharton: “No other player in baseball has generated more buzz this summer. The strong, fleet Cuban — called up from the minors in early June — started the week batting .436 with seven home runs and has shown a rifle arm from the outfield. … Puig will have played only 30 games by the time All-Star rosters are announced Saturday. … The National League and American League will bring 34-man squads to the July 16 game at Citi Field in New York. Fans elect the starters, but Puig came along too late to get his name on the ballot. The rest of the team is filled out by MLB players, who vote for pitchers and backups, and the manager, who can add a limited number of reserves. … MLB could list Puig on the ‘Final Vote’ ballot, which allows fans to pick the last spot … from among five candidates. That voting begins Saturday. …

“Puig's first 22 days qualified as historic, his .442 batting average surpassing the record of .422 set by Terry Pendleton of the 1984 St. Louis Cardinals, according to STATS LLC. His speed and power drew instant comparisons to a young Roberto Clemente. It didn't hurt that few people knew much about the 22-year-old Cuban defector before then, which added to his mystique. [Official MLB historian John] Thorn cannot recall any major league player enjoying such a fast start before the All-Star break. Minor leaguers … tend to be called up later in the season.” http://lat.ms/1aJ51Up

** Data shows that American gun owners can support gun safety, and Americans without guns can support gun owners. Responsible gun ownership is part of what makes us Americans, but recent tragedies show America is not doing enough to keep its citizens safe. We know that doing nothing while others are in danger is not the American way. We’re mobilizing support to push the U.S. Senate to take another vote on expanded background check legislation. These common-sense measures -- supported by 90% of Americans -- will keep us all safer by deterring criminals or the seriously mentally ill from getting access to guns. www.rightsandresponsibilitiestour.com **